Chanakya Thanthram movie review: A tepid thriller

Cast: Unni Mukundan, Anoop Menon, Sshivada, Shruthi Ramachandran, Hareesh Perumanna
Director: Kannan Thamarakkulam
 

For those fed up of seeing the male lead playing an engineer, a college student, a policeman, an IT professional or nothing at all, here is Unni Mukundan playing Arjun Varma, who, after studying and becoming a topper in Criminology, becomes a private detective. Does his job fulfill his expectations of the thrills and mind games that he expects? Yes and a lot more. This is the second outing where Kannan Thamarakkulam joins hands with Unni Mukundan after Achayans and the film is definitely an improvement from their earlier project. Chanakya Thanthram is projected as a thriller and it remains faithful to its genre.

The film travels through the life of Arjun, who lands a job in Kochi at the office of a detective agency headed by Sshivada, who plays Irene. She gives him some individuals to investigate and Arjun makes short work of gathering intelligence about them. He does that using a variety of technical tools and impersonating various people including a sage, a Sikh and a sexy woman to get close to his subjects. Romance also brews when he gets acquainted with an orphan Andrea, played by Shruthi. 

The thrills begin when the people he has investigated start getting murdered and Arjun’s suspicions are raised. He embarks on an investigation all on his own to get answers. The hunter becomes the hunted when a mysterious character Iqbal, played by Anoop Menon, starts shadowing Arjun. What is Iqbal’s agenda and how is he connected to the deaths? The first half of the film takes a long time in setting up the characters and introducing unnecessary characters like Ramesh Pisharody just to elicit laughs. Hareesh Perumanna does a fair job of playing Arjun’s sidekick, who manages to eke out some giggles. It is the second half that makes the story take a thrilling U-turn with the ulterior motives of the lead characters getting revealed along with some high octane action sequences.

The scriptwriter has to be applauded for weaving in very current and disturbing social issues and the director has showed courage in highlighting the issues starkly. Coming to the roles, Unni is in his element as the confident, cunning and intelligent detective who also knows to take down a dozen villains with his bare hands. The tag of ‘action king’ suits him to a T. Sshivada, Shruthi, Anoop Menon all shine in their respective roles. The editing could have been a bit tighter in the first half. The cinematography by Pradeep Nair is good and the music by Shaan Rahman did not fail to thrill. The BGM in parts was out of place when some action sequences played out. All in all, a one-time watch.